So I ended up trying to dig deeper into this. It turns out OAA is still really opague when it comes to infielders. For outfielders, I can look on Baseball Savant and watch a video of every play they are involved in along with seeing the catch probability for that play. Nothing like this appears to be available for infielders.
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So none of the numbers add up making cross-referencing very difficult. I still plan to try and monitor this on a game-by-game basis to try and identify any trends as to what is causing his OAA and DRS to diverge so greatly but definitely a bit disappointing that infielder OAA is still so lacking in public clarity in how it's calculated.
Ok! I think it's starting to make some more sense. So it seems Baseball Savant's in-depth defensive OAA player pages take an additional day to update. i.e., CJ Abrams' page (first link below) is up-to-date as of Friday's game, and does not yet include yesterday's game. This appears to be the case as 9 more attempts were added to his ledger this morning, which is exactly the number of plays he was involved in on Friday.
Additionally, his OAA went from -10 to -11. So this was a game of some consequence in determining his defensive value.
Breaking his 9 new attempts down into 4 buckets based on their chance of success as 75%-100%, 50%-75%, etc. those attempts break down into 6 in the 75%-100% bucket, 1 in the 50%-75% bucket, and 2 in the 0%-25% bucket.
Of the 9 defensive plays Abrams was involved in, 4 resulted in a hit. His success rate went down for the 50%-75% bucket (and this is where the additional -1 of OAA for the day came from) so we can deduce that the 1 play that went into this bucket was 1 of the 4 hits.
Abrams' success rate in the 0%-25% is also still 0%, so we can also deduce that 2 of the hits went into this bucket. This means the remaining hit from defensive plays Abrams was involved in must have been in the 75%-100% bucket. I've linked to the 4 hits below as well. Baseball Savant doesn't tell us what the success attempt was on the individual play itself, that information must be stored internally, so we have to just use the eye test to guess which plays go into which bucket.
CJ Abrams Statcast Outs Above Average Pagehttps://baseballsavant.mlb.com/visuals/statcast-infield-defense?type=Fielder&playerId=682928&startYear=2024&endYear=2024&result=&direction=&normalize=undefined&roles=&esrGT=0&esrLT=1&evGT=0&evLT=125&distGT=0&distLT=200&batside=&viz=intercept_fielder_starting_position_Top 1 single by Alec Burleson off Corbinhttps://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=12f0d5d3-38f2-46ac-9ebc-c3d664ba444fHard to say whether this one or the top 5 inning single is the 50%-75% bucket hit, but if I had to make a guess it is this one as it looks like it was hit right at Abrams' even if it was smoked.
Top 4 single by Paul Goldschmidt off Corbinhttps://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=11926c7f-059d-471d-ac2c-dd2b2d51ce9fMy guess is this is the play that went into the 75%-100% bucket. Coming in appears to be Abrams' biggest weakness.
Top 5 single by Willson Contreras off Corbinhttps://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=76985893-9e6e-4cd4-b0fb-d497c25399b0Top 10 single by Nolan Gorman off Florohttps://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=4fdc955c-5163-4239-b0d1-aef7f9070eb3Have to imagine this is one of the 0%-25% bucket hits.
I'm sure I'm the only one who cares that much about this but I do find it interesting to go through as I'm primarily a radio listener/gameday follower and so don't actually see what Abrams looks like in the field all that much. Just based on this analysis of one day I can see why OAA does not like him. Makes me wonder why DRS and UZR do (another above average season by DRS of 2 btw).
